One of the other women credited with contributing to the music for the "Egyptian Matinee" was Kathleen Schlesinger. At the time, I didn't know much about her, but the event programme noted that she provided a number of replica instruments used at the Hippodrome that afternoon from her own collection.

Schlesinger is known in musical theory circles for her work on recreating ancient music, using instruments and tools that she had specially made based on ancient source materials. Nine years after the Hippodrome performance, she published a book, The Greek Aulos, describing her findings.

For decades Schlesinger also held a pioneering research fellowship at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Archaeology. This department was the earliest British-based training institution for archaeologists – being founded decades before the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London (now part of UCL). It instituted a Fellowship in the Archaeology of Music in 1914.

Kathleen Schlesinger was the first Fellow – in fact, Kate Bowen's investigation of the Institute of Archaeology's Annual Reports reveals that the Fellowship was designed for her, and her scholarship promoted by John Garstang, then Professor of the Methods and Practice of Archaeology at the Institute. The Fellowship enabled her to continue her research on the ancient history of musical instruments, in which she was already well-established.

By this stage, Schlesinger was also an experienced lecturer, working as an Extension lecturer for the University of London. She is to be added to the ranks of women I've written about in Archaeologists in Printwho organised and delivered lectures and courses at the British Museum, incorporating collections on display into their curricula. Schlesinger also created and delivered a set of lectures on the history of musical instruments in the galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In addition, she was featured as a lecturer at the 1914 Children's Welfare Exhibition at Kensington Olympia, discussing musical instruments to accompany a special display at the event.

While she is now known for her work on ancient Greek music and instruments, she had a wide-ranging field of investigation, and her museum lectures sought to appeal to audiences interested in Biblical history (and by extension the archaeology of the Levant, Egypt/Sudan and Mesopotamia) as well. For these lectures she created models of instruments.

Kate Bowen's detailed research on Schlesinger and her musical collaborator Elsie Hamilton also highlights Schlesinger's role in innovative performances combining music and archaeology before her contributions to Julia Chatterton's 1930 Hippodrome programme. These include, intriguingly, the music for a drama called "Sensa" (the result of a collaboration between two other women, Maud Hoffman and Mabel Collins) which was set in ancient Egypt, and performed in theatres in London in 1914 and 1919.*

In the 1930s, an American musician came to visit an elderly Kathleen Schlesinger in her home in Highgate. He was Harry Partch, and his memory of tea with Schlesinger makes for fascinating reading. She told him about using a British Museum vase as model for her replica kithara, which was made to her specifications by a handy gas-meter man during the First World War out of wood from a crate that had once contained oranges.

Hindson, C. 2017. Beautiful Pagans: When a Best Selling Author and a West End Actress Made a Spiritualist Performance. In Guy, J. (Ed).The Edinburgh Companion to Fin-de-Siècle Literature, Culture and the Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

*The idea for Collins's book Idyll of the White Lotus(on which "Sensa" was based) came to her after seeing Cleopatra's Needle being placed on Embankment in 1878. Collins was very interested in the occult, and spotting the Needle triggered visions of ancient Egyptian priests. Her interpretation of their presence - and through this the inspiration for Idyll and "Sensa" - drew on British Museum Curator Wallis Budge's book Egyptian Magic. For more on Collins, Hoffman, and the creation and performances of "Sensa", see Catherine Hindson's chapter referenced above.

Tuesday 3 June 1930, 2.30 p. m. London’s Hippodrome Theatre. Lady Newnes (aka Emmeline de Rutzen) hosts a “Historical Egyptian Matinee” to raise funds for the British School of Egyptian archaeology's excavations in Palestine and the Friends of the Poor. Mrs Julia Chatterton, a well-known folk song collector, composes all the music for the occasion, to be played on Egyptian instruments. The audience enters to the strains of Verdi’s Aida – first presented in 1871 at the Khedival Opera House in Cairo.

Once everyone is seated, a gong tolls. The familiarity of Verdi gives way to something entirely different, and much more authentic. Julia Chatterton wants the music to take the audience away from themselves, away from London, away from the 20th century. They are to learn and appreciate, the programme notes tell them, “the Oriental mode of musical expressions.”

Julia Cook-Watson Chatterton was no dilettante. She was a member of the Society of Women Musicians before World War 1, she had moved to Egypt at some point before 1914 to edit the illustrated newspaper The Sphinx, and spent ten years living in Egypt with her husband, architect Frederick Chatterton, who was employed in the Egyptian Public Works Department. While there, she began researching Egyptian songs and instruments alongside making her name and garnering official recognition for her work entertaining the troops based in Cairo via the “Cards Concert Party” during the war. Her wartime medals were sold at Bonhams in 2013.

When she eventually returned to England in the 1920s, she began composing pieces with Egyptian themes, using instruments she had collected in Egypt, and presenting them in London. The 1930 issue of Egypt and the Sudan features Chatterton’s article on “The Music of Egypt” in which she attempts to educate English tourists about the history and musicality of Egyptian songs and instruments.

I first came across references to Julia Chatterton’s work on the Hippodrome event some years ago; it’s been on my list of topics to blog about ever since. In preparing for a talk at the Museo Egizio in Turin, I’ve revisited my initial research. Thanks to Petrie Museum curator Anna Garnett and former curator Alice Stevenson, I’ve now been able to see some of the fantastic ephemera created for this event in the Museum's archive.

In the programme, a full picture of the musical programme for the afternoon emerges. Fourteen individual musical interludes, with additional “incidents” occurred during the event. Italian-born London-based composer Francesco Ticciati conducted the orchestra. Noted music historian, archaeologist and British Museum curator Kathleen Schlesinger loaned instruments from her personal collection. Vocalists included one soprano, three mezzo sopranos, two tenors and four baritones (one of whom was Petrie student Gerald Lankester Harding). Among the instrumentalists were a lute player, a tamboura player, a harpist and a pianist. Mamoun Abd el Salam was responsible for playing the nay, the argul and the rebab. Julia Chatterton herself was also one of the musicians playing the darraboukeh, an instrument with which she was particularly skilled, and the kithara.

Complementing the music was a series of fourteen tableaux showing ancient Egyptian history between 8000 and 30 B. C. The performance had 81 cast-members, and “one white pigeon” (representing a dove). It began with a scene of earliest Egypt, accompanied by “Rhythmic Hand Clapping”, showing the Badarian civilisation, the remains of which had recently been excavated by Petrie students Guy Brunton and Winifred Newberry Brunton (also a noted artist). The story of King Khufu and "The Pyramid Age” of the 4th Dynasty was commemorated in ﻿Terence Grey﻿’s short play The Building of the Pyramid.

Princess "Sat-hat-hor-ant" (Sithathoriunet), whose elaborate ﻿jewellery﻿ had been the highlight of Petrie’s 1913-14 season at Lahun, was also featured in the tableaux. The jewellery worn during the performance was recreated from published plates by Lady Leeds (Eltheleen Winnaretta Singer), who took the part of Nefert in the Pyramid Age Tableaux, using cardboard, beads, wax and macaroni. The action wound up in Roman Egypt, with appearances from Marc Antony, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra (played by Lady Newnes herself).

The matinee attracted an audience of 1400 people, among them Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter. Lotus-badge wearing volunteers handed out further information on the British School of Egyptian archaeology’s research, schemes and publications to interested audience members - it was a fundraising venture, after all.

It seems to have been quite the Society event, and there are so many elements to explore in this one action packed aural and visual extravaganza it’s impossible to cover in one blog post, or in one lecture. Needless to say I’ll be returning to this topic in due course, and perhaps someone with a connection to the event will have even more information! (Pretty please?)

*Special thanks to Heba Abd el Gawad for finding suitable links for the Egyptian instruments featured in this piece.

References/Further Reading

Drower, M. 1995. Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Chatterton, J. 1930. The Music of Egypt. Egypt and the Sudan. London: The Tourist Development Association of Egypt, Cairo Station.